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Fried Artichokes

Boiled artichokes are battered with flour, egg yolk, milk, and salt, then fried in hot lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Artichoke and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 466 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Artichokes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the artichokes in salted water until tender.

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, a pinch of salt, egg yolk, and enough milk to create a batter.

  3. Cut the artichokes in half and dip them in the batter.

Fry

  1. Fry the battered artichokes in hot lard until golden brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Artichoke + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Artichoke + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Artichokes
Main vegetable; boiling makes them tender before they are battered and fried.
Flour
Forms the batter that coats the artichokes and crisps into a golden shell when fried.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps the batter bind to the artichoke pieces.
Milk
Loosens the flour and egg into a batter with a smooth, coating consistency.
Lard
Hot frying fat that cooks the batter quickly and browns it.

The step that matters

Frying the battered artichokes. The lard must be hot enough to set the batter quickly. If it is too cool, the batter absorbs oil, turns greasy and browns unevenly.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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